Letty hovered upwards, “In the kitchen, straight through. I didn’t see anything else.”
The phone was answered: “Dr Rimes’ residence –”
“Holly, you need to get out of there.”
“Pax?”
“I got a call from the Ministry. On Rimes’ phone. They know. I’m sorry.”
“What do you mean –”
“You need to leave, now.”
“And go where? How –”
“Is that the Bartons?” Lightgate appeared alongside the phone, eyes suddenly bright with excitement. “I can take them to Broadplain.”
Pax needed only the briefest pause, her instinct flaring against leaving Lightgate responsible for anyone’s safety. “I’m sending Letty to get you, she’ll take you somewhere safe. And...I’m sorry, I need to lose this phone.”
She hung up as Letty said, “Get this fucking liquid and we’ll go together.”
“You said there’s nothing dangerous in there. Go, meet me back at Rolarn’s place.”
Letty looked from Pax up to Lightgate. “You gonna watch her?”
“While you’re on a collision course with the Ministry?” Lightgate’s hands dropped to her pistols. Holding them like handles. “No chance.”
“Both of you go if you have to,” said Pax, raising her voice. As the fairies started to move, she looked at the phone in her hand. Rimes had said they couldn’t track everything, but they’d surely be after this now. “Can you take this with you? Dump it somewhere.”
Sam swept her jacket off the back of her chair as Roper blocked her doorway. She started dismissing him before she’d met his eyes. “We’re on our way out – what’s wrong?”
“There’s been another incident,” he said, cheeks flushed red. “In Nothicker.”
Sam stared. They couldn’t waste time cleaning up after the praelucente – not now. Pax was with someone – it had to be one of the Fae, they’d referenced IS – and she’d done something with Rimes. The doctor had been involved with whatever Apothel knew. Even if Pax wasn’t a criminal herself, her thuggish connections or the Fae were. She said, “I need to find this woman – can you run a phone trace?”
“Now?” Roper exclaimed. “Ms Ward, we’ve got a major crisis!”
Sam bit her lip. Fine. She had to move fast. Whether Pax had hurt the doctor or was working with her, chances were they’d been to the laboratory on the hill, and would be covering their tracks. Maybe they’d been hiding there all along. Had Casaria there. Was Pax there now?
“Get Mathers in,” Sam told Roper, quickly. “Use the agents near Nothicker.”
“Devlin’s been alerted,” Roper said, “and the deputy director. But –”
“There’s nothing I can do,” Sam said, briskly. “We’ve got to go.”
“You’re the ranking officer!” Roper insisted. “Someone needs to call through to London, and file an LR-58 –”
“Not now!” Seeing his stunned expression, Sam struggled to keep her voice reasonable. “You can open the LR-58 yourself. London can wait. Please step aside.”
“I’ll handle it,” Landon volunteered, drawing a hopeful look from Roper.
“No!” Sam insisted. “I need you with me.”
“Ms Ward...” Roper started. There was no time: Pax would know Sam was on her way to Rimes’ place. She barged past the analyst.
“We’ve got a lead on the root of this problem,” she said, for her own benefit more than his. “All this chaos started with Pax; she’s got information about the praelucente’s instability – meaning she can help us stop it or she could make it worse. We have to find her, we have to understand what she’s up to.” Sam turned back to give one final, firm reason. “And she might have Casaria.”
Roper responded with weak, stuttering complaints. “But the LR-58 – street-level – what if the papers call?”
“Don’t answer!”
26
“Why were the Ministry calling you?” Holly demanded, storming after Rimes like a woman possessed. “You turned them away, didn’t you?”
Barton hopped after her, trying to get in the way, barely able to keep up. He should have seen this coming: Holly must’ve been waiting for a chance to rip into Rimes.
“They work together,” Barton said. “Keep your enemies close, Holly, that’s basic –”
“The only basic thing here is your thick skull!” Holly snapped. She turned on Rimes. “Do you have any idea the trouble you’ve caused?” Rimes refused to meet her gaze, receding into her own flustering attempts to organise a stack of petri dishes. Holly circled a workbench, trying to get in front of her. “What are we supposed to do? We’re not using that stolen car, are we? Do you have some form of transport besides rusty scooters?”
“They don’t come here,” Rimes answered quietly. “They can’t come here.”
“Are you hearing me?” Holly raised her voice. “How do we get out of here?”
“Mum!” Grace cut in, loud and worried enough that Holly paused. Bless her, Barton thought. She could calm this beast.
“Grace,” Holly faltered. “Best get your things together.”
“What things?”
“I don’t know!” Holly exploded again, hands in the air. “Find some!”
“There’s a tunnel...” Rimes said. “Then a boat, or a path along the river. But the Ministry aren’t going to –”
“Get your head out of the clouds!” Holly commanded. “Where’s this tunnel go? What then?” She spun to Barton. “Do you know about this?”
Barton nodded. The old escape plan, which they’d never needed. How many times Apothel had insisted the spooks would come for them, and none of them had really believed it.
“I can talk to them,” Rimes said.
“I bloody doubt that,” Holly said. “Do you have money? We’ll get to a train station, that’s what we’ll do. Go to Betty in Manchester, as we should’ve done in the first place.”
“They have people in Manchester,” Barton said.
“So where can we go?”
That was the part Apothel’s plan hadn’t accounted for. Escape, fine, but then what? Barton said, “They have people in every major city. Across Europe, too. We’re better off in Ordshaw.”
Holly snarled, “In places like this?”
“Mum!” Grace cried again, stomping a foot. “We need to work together!”
Holly paused, but her gaze was no less fierce. Rimes turned without another word and pointed at the edge of a trapdoor, beneath a crate of metal piping. She crouched to start shifting the crate, and her face strained, feebly. Holly shoved her aside. She used all her weight to move the box herself, and it scraped over the floorboards with a piercing sound, tearing up the woodwork. Holly thrust the trapdoor open.
Grace took Barton by the elbow as they got closer, the pair of them ambling like they were shackled. He could feel his ankle straining, but couldn’t let it show. The look on Grace’s face gave him strength. She was ready, eyes determined, filthy t-shirt and shorts partially concealed under a tatty leather raincoat she had found. She’d found some slip-on shoes, too. Barton whispered, “We’ll be okay, honey.”
Rimes stood beside Holly, frightened eyes absurdly big in those glasses.
“A light would be nice,” Holly said.
Rimes fussed to the side and thrust a torch into Holly’s hands, then took a few quick steps back. Holly regarded the torch oddly. “You first, I think.”
Rimes did as she was told, climbing nervously into the tunnel. Twenty years Holly’s senior, but following her orders the same as everyone else. Barton came to the ladder next, as quick as his aches would allow. He said, “You go, both of you. I’ll activate the defences.”
“Oh rot,” Holly snapped. She told Grace, “Hurry on down, dear, we’re right behind you.”
Grace jumped forwards, embracing her in a hug.
“I love you, Mum.”
Holly swallowed the lump in her throat. “Get along.”
As Grace climb
ed onto the ladder, Holly turned to Barton. “Are you going to get your fat gut down there, or what?”
“The defences...”
“Tell me what needs doing.” She helped him onto the ladder, carrying some of his weight.
“There’s a panel,” Barton said. “Near the window. Throw all the switches up.” He paused and warned, “We’ve never had to do this before. Never tried it.”
“Right,” said Holly, determined. “All the switches are going up.”
Pax crept quickly through the burnt-out building. Letty’s assurances hadn’t made the place feel safe, given the sharp edges of its scorched fixtures and the lack of clear light. Had the Blue Angel chosen this place for a drop-off after learning about the fire, or had it started the fire to create a drop-off point?
Was this her over-thinking, like Letty said?
Entering the kitchen, Pax was drawn to dim green light. The cylinder sat in the middle of the room like a fluorescent camping lantern, the love child of a masonry jar and a nuclear reactor. Behind it, the remnants of the outer wall stood two feet high; chipboard and tarp covered the space above. To the right, a charred star emanated from the skeleton of cabinets and hinges. The source of the fire. At least Pax had solved one mystery: some prat had failed to use an oven properly.
Pax moved closer. No sign of hideous clawing in the walls. No electric squid limbs. Didn’t look like the ash-dusted tiles were going to break apart and reveal a pit of teeth.
She approached the jar and scooped it up. Just as she turned to leave, crack – the floor broke apart around her boots. She shrieked as she dropped, plunging into something. She heaved at her legs but both feet were stuck. Regaining her balance, clutching the glo, she looked down and swore.
Not teeth, but scarcely better: where there’d been tiles before, there was a dark, pulsating mass. Like the acid slug from the chapel, it moved fluidly, bulging undulations illuminated by the liquid’s light. It was wrapped around her boots, up to her ankles, and tightening. Pax heaved at her left leg, leaning into it, but it wouldn’t move.
“Get the fuck off me!” she yelled, but it closed tighter and sucked down. She was being dragged into it. Pax shifted the jar under one arm and threw the other out, looking for something to grab hold of. She twisted, clawing at the tarp and boarding of the broken wall. The thing sucked at her calves like living mud. She swore again, getting a fistful of tarp, but the material ripped, high up, and fell on her like a drape. She flapped it frantically out of her face and grabbed out again, but her fingers scraped against the boards, nothing to hold onto.
It had pulled her down to her knees, enveloping her. She planted her free hand on the floor, pushing back against it. Barely slowing it. It kept sucking, pulling her further – into what? An expanding, moving, squeezing mud.
Should’ve seen this coming, she told herself. Did see this coming. Stupid, stupid.
She checked the doorway, the shadows. The living mud squelched up around her thighs. No one was saving her this time; no fairy entourage, no Casaria with a miracle weapon. She took deep breaths, gritting her teeth and pushing harder against the floor.
And all for this dumb fucking liquid.
She looked at the jar. They’d said ridiculous things about it, hadn’t they? It helped Apothel’s fight. It brought Barton back from the brink. It gave them eyes in the Sunken City. Pax gave a last frantic look around the room. No other options.
She twisted off the cap and lifted the jar to her lips. The vile sludge gave another hard tug, swarming up to her waist. She gulped down a mouthful of the glowing liquid and gagged noiselessly as it burned its way down. The warmth spread through her as if it was whisky, but bolder, surging into her limbs. Filling every vein. Right to her fingertips. Her vision blurred and pulsed in a kaleidoscope of colours.
For a moment, time stopped. The sludge wasn’t pulling. She wasn’t breathing. The air was still. In that frozen second she placed the jar slowly, calmly aside, and blinked heavily, once, twice. The room twisted then came back into focus with clear grey lines, the shadows gone. She could make out everything.
She looked down, to where her lower half was being consumed by darkness, and it sucked at her again, wrapping around her hips. She raised both fists in a defiant cry but held them there as she saw the sludge for what it really was.
Under its thick black skin a network of arteries was moving, manoeuvring the creature in multiple directions at once, twisting around her legs. They lit up like a purple X-ray image. The arteries fed back, in a complicated, vascular pattern, to low-down masses of light: throbbing internal organs.
There was something Pax could grip onto.
It sucked at her again, and she screamed as she punched a hand into the writhing mass, aiming for a gap in the arteries. Her fist went straight through, all the way down, and the sludge separated around her as she bent into it, driving her hand in. Her scream turned to an animal yell. She flexed her fingers as she continued, parting the mucky flesh, stretching, finally, to the nearest of the bulging organs. Her fingers closed around it, texture like liver. And she pulled back.
The arteries lit up red as she squeezed, and the whole shape pulsed outward, stricken. Her legs were released and she fell back, lower back hitting the edge of the hole in the floor but her hand still squeezing. The mass of sludge throbbed up, out, bulging in all directions as she twisted her hand and kept pulling, putting every ounce of her strength into shifting this thing. She kicked at the same time, getting a foothold in the struggling monster and pushing herself out of the hole. Another kick, another push, the thing in her hand all the time. She heaved herself away and rolled off, through the ash, finally letting go of the creature’s organ.
Gasping, her back muscles burning, Pax rolled over and looked back as the creature released a piercing hiss. The parts of its sludgy mass that had spread out into the room flopped to the floor, and the whole thing slowly slid back into the hole like a deflated balloon. The crack in the tiles steamed like a geyser. Light bounced off the gas, the red of the arteries turning purple again, then dimming. Pax blinked, not sure what was real, what was the effects of the drink.
She raised her hands in front of her face, and saw the light there, too.
Her own veins, glowing through the flesh. Electric blue.
Pax fell back with another small shriek and shook her hands to get it off.
No no no, fuck that.
She scrambled to her feet, swept up the jar and ran.
Pax slowed down as she reached Casaria, skipping on the uneven kilter of having only one boot. Someone was silhouetted in the window of a house opposite, watching. Pax pulled her hood up and ducked. A neighbour shouted, uncertainly, “I’m calling the police!”
She ignored the threat, hoping that’s all it was.
Casaria stared at her warily, still leaning against the tree with his hand pressed into his wound. As she crouched and opened the jar, he tried to speak, “Pax...what are you...”
His eyes ran to her clothes, her trousers sodden with slime. No sense trying to explain. She tilted the glo towards his lips. “Drink this.”
Casaria’s eyes shot open and he jerked his head away with a curse. He struck the tree behind him, and Pax thrust her other hand out to hold him still. He was weak, thankfully, and only half awake; she held his neck firmly and rammed the jar into his mouth. He tried to spit the liquid out but she clamped her hand over his mouth and hissed, “After what I just went through, fucking drink it.”
In his struggle, Casaria gulped, swallowed. Pax saw the change come over him in an instant, recognising what she’d felt herself. He had to blink a few times, and as his eyes got wider his pupils narrowed. His mouth dropped open as he focused horrified eyes on her.
He was seeing what she’d seen, wasn’t he?
Pax slowly removed her hand from Casaria’s mouth, ignoring the blue light under her flesh. There was no similar glowing under his skin. She stood, uneasily. It was bad. This liquid’s power was starting to fad
e, already, her vision going back to dreary normal, the blue in her veins dimming, but it was too late to ignore it. Casaria clearly saw it too.
His face relaxed, somewhat; his jaw unclenched, like the pain was lifting. His hand holding the wound slackened. But he was staring at her with a knotted brow.
She’d taken more from the minotaur than psychic fits. Something was inside her. She didn’t want to know what.
“Get up,” Pax said, breaking Casaria’s gaze. “We’ve got to go.”
Casaria said nothing, still staring, transfixed by what he was seeing. But he stood.
27
“We’re getting close to something,” Sam told Landon. “I know it.”
As they sped through the suburb of Long Culdon, Sam scanned the changing scenery. The houses were small, cheap and quiet. A retirement community, if there was any community at all. It had been one of her options when she moved into the suburbs last year, but she’d opted for Geeside in the east; slightly younger, if further afield. Seeing how quickly Landon had got them here, she wondered if it had been the right choice.
As they climbed the hill, a bigger question occupied her mind. Would Landon be able to handle what they found here? The decision hadn’t come easily for him, ignoring the duty of cordoning off another accident in favour of a fugitive chase. She hoped his uncertainty about helping her came from his reluctance to break the rules, not because he was afraid. Pax Kuranes was an enigma and Darren Barton was known to be dangerous, if he was with her. To say nothing of hired thugs and Fae. Landon carried a gun, but how well could he use it?
Either way, in a few turns they’d reach the approach to Dr Rimes’ shack, alone.
“Gonna be interesting,” Landon said, so dry she doubted he meant it. “They don’t like us coming up here. Never been myself.”
“Another problem we’ve been avoiding,” Ward said. “I understand them letting Dr Rimes continue her work, but didn’t she warrant close scrutiny, rather than being kept at arm’s length? Did Devlin and Farnham even search the place this morning?”
The Sunken City Trilogy Page 50
